Will SOW be published by Ubi?
 

Please tell me no! It'd be criminal for such a great game to be stuck with such awful DRM.

Good question.
We can only hope it won't be.

It would break my heart to be unable to buy SoW due to Ubi's DRM system.

I'd like to tell you no. There has been a lot of speculation, but little hard evidence on this. Some years back, it appeared that Ubi were going to publish, but I'd have thought if they were, we'd have heard more.

Having said that, I'm not even sure that Ubisoft will still be in business by the time SoW comes out, after the mess they made of SH5. Releasing it in the state it was in looked liked desperation, even ignoring the ridiculous DRM.

As with everything else with SoW:BoB, we'll have to wait and see...

I guess the time is right for online only, cash directly to the devs/publisher type of distribution. RoF, WoP, DCS: BS - all published without Ubi and such. ArmA (1, 2 etc.) also, ditched Codemasters and apparently online distribution (through Steam) works for them real well too.

The success or failure of a niche title like SH5 would be of very little importance to a huge publisher like Ubisoft.

If desperation was involved, its more likely the developer was running out of money.

Assassin's Creed 2 was released at the same time with the same DRM. It's still not going to bring down a monster like Ubisoft, though. Most of the sales of AC2 would likely be on consoles anyway.